What is AI really giving back to tech investors? Here’s the hard truth.

Outside the Box

AI boosters cling to fanciful forecasts — even if meaningful revenue and productivity has yet to materialize

Last Updated: May 14, 2025 at 7:14 p.m. ET
First Published: May 14, 2025 at 7:50 a.m. ET

Nobel Laureate Robert Solow once said that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity figures” — an observation now called the Solow paradox. Likewise, today we see AI everywhere but in productivity.

Even worse, we don’t see it in revenue, which should appear long before productivity improvements. Computer revenue rose steadily from the 1950s through the 1980s before a productivity bump appeared in the early 1990s. Substantial revenue has yet to materialize from AI, and it may be decades before we see a productivity bump.